Dodd says the administration's $700 billion bailout proposal is not acceptable.
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I’m not playing gotcha here. This is telling: if Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.
In the latest (Oct. 2) issue of Rolling Stone, on sale now but not yet available online, writer Matt Taibbi calls out the American electorate in a major new piece called 'The Lies of Sarah Palin.' A snippet:
"Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.
"And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin' picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.
"Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV – and this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation."
The government plans to substantially increase disability benefits for veterans with mild traumatic brain injuries, acknowledging for the first time that veterans suffering from this less severe version of the Iraq war's signature wound will struggle to make a living.
"We're saying it's real," said Tom Pamperin, a deputy director for the Department of Veteran Affairs, about the significance of the change to benefits in the regulation the VA plans to publish today.
Up to 320,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffered traumatic brain injury, a RAND Corp. study estimated this year. The vast majority of the cases are mild and came from exposure to an explosion, often from a roadside bomb. Most veterans with mild cases recover, Pamperin said, but some are left with permanent problems.
Compensation could reach $600 a month, the VA said. Currently, veterans with symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, sensitivity to light, ringing in the ears and irritability and insomnia collect $117.
More than 1.6 million U.S. troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. About half of those are now veterans, and slightly less than half of those veterans have sought health care from the VA (my em), records show. In the past year, the department has screened 190,000 of these veterans for brain injury. About 20% showed signs of a brain injury, but only about 5% were confirmed as suffering the wound.
The regulation modifies a 1961 rating schedule for mild brain trauma and brings compensation for this ailment into the 21st Century, said Lonnie Bristow, chairman of an Institute of Medicine committee that studied veterans' benefits.
The old regulation failed to recognize that wounds such as brain injuries from blasts — which do not show up on scans — are only understood by what patients say they are suffering, Bristow said.
"VA has been assessing their injuries based on outdated science," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee.
Corporate India is in shock after a mob of sacked workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who had dismissed them from a factory in a suburb of Delhi.
Lalit Kishore Choudhary, 47, the head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian-headquartered manufacturer of car parts, died of severe head wounds on Monday afternoon after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said.
The incident, in Greater Noida, just outside the Indian capital, followed a long-running dispute between the factory's management and workers who had demanded better pay and permanent contracts.
President Bush compounded widespread concern about a domestic economy on the verge of collapse today when he announced that FEMA would coordinate the 700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street.
"We have our best people on it," Bush insisted, causing the market to slide two thousand points late this morning. Bush and his staff expressed surprise that Adminstration assurances have done little to buoy confidence in the economy. "None of the folks in charge of the bailout ever worked with horses or anything," said a perplexed White House staffer.
Circumstances on Wall Street remained dire today. Thousands of traders and bankers have been without money, gold ingots, or economic power for almost a week now, and conditions in hastily constructed "trailer banks" have been horrible. "There are hardly any bathroom attendants here at all," complained one temporary resident, Preston Brunswick III, a complex derivatives trader who "barely cleared a million" last year.
Compounding the crisis, trucks full of relief money have been mysteriously stalled in Alabama, and FEMA officials were at a loss to explain why it was so hard to get the "Benjamins" to New York, where they are so desperately needed.
"We need that money now! We're barely able to expense out our lunches," exclaimed worried A.I.G. executive Gwen Driscoll. Driscoll fretted that her corporate American Express Platinum card was "being strained to the breaking point."
Meanwhile, Republicans warned that the allegedly Democratic-controlled Congress would take too much time debating a relief bill. "We need a lack of oversight, and we need it now," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. "Before anyone has a chance to think about it."
Adding to what Turkana and Mary have already posted on this subject, there is no way in hell the congressional Democrats should dance to Bush and Paulson's tune or timing with this corporate welfare scam. Anytime Bush calls for immediate congressional action on anything, Democrats should do the opposite. He has rammed through the Iraq war this way. He has rammed through domestic spying illegalities using phony terror threats this way. And now he and Paulson want Congress to hand the Treasury Secretary uncontested power on something they didn't tell Congress was an immediate need until last Thursday? I don't think so. [my em]
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If the world economy is so fragile that it will melt down unless Wall Street is handed $700 billion immediately, then Paulson should be impeached for proposing what amounts to a criminal payoff, and Bernanke dragged to a hearing on why he has a job. And if foreign banks get bailed out by American taxpayers, especially by anything that Phil Gramm engineered, forget it. Gramm should be in jail.
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It is a nice, small but productive island Beijing wants to reunite with the fatherland for quite a while. Until now U.S. interests prevented that. But now things may have changed.
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Translated from diplo-speech: "Give us Taiwan and you'll get the loan."
Taiwan will not be the only 'additional condition' in this deal but for China it is the premier one.
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The reason Congress MUST pass this bailout bill NOW is because in a short time an Obama administration might be taking over. THAT is the reason it has to be done NOW and uses up all the rest of the money the United States might be able to borrow, ever, instead of passing something that covers the problem for a few months. Otherwise there would be a chance for a sensible approach that follows the principles of one-person-one-vote democracy instead of one-dollar-one-vote Republicanism.
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An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region.
Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia.
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...Here are the principles Obama laid out over the weekend:
No blank check. We must insist on independent accountability and oversight. Main Street, not just Wall Street. We need an emergency economic plan to help working families—a plan that would help folks cope with rising gas and food prices, create infrastructure jobs, etc. Help homeowners stay in their homes. We cannot have a plan for Wall Street banks that does not help homeowners stay in their homes and help distressed communities. Taxpayers should be protected. This should not be a handout to Wall Street. Rescue requires mutual responsibility. Institutions that benefit from taxpayer help must help protect American homeowners and the American economy. We cannot underwrite continued irresponsibility. Build a regulatory structure for the 21st Century. We should commit ourselves to new rules of the road for the 21st Century economy. A global response. The United States must lead, but we must also insist that other nations, who have a huge stake in the outcome, join us in helping to secure the financial markets
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That would be the Rick Davis who runs the McCain campaign, the campaign that has tried to connect Obama to former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, even running ads to that effect. Contrary to McCain's lies, however, Raines is not an Obama advisor. (And even if he were, so what? McCain takes advice from the likes of Carly Fiorina, the failed former Hewlett-Packard CEO and now a top McCain surrogate. There wouldn't be anything wrong with Obama talking to an important figure like Raines.)
But Davis isn't just a McCain advisor, he's McCain's campaign manager. And he actively campaigned on behalf of those two mortgage giants against additional regulation. In other words, he wasn't just part of the problem, he was a high-paid lobbyist fighting attempts to solve the problem. And why did Fannie and Freddie pay Davis so much money?
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Officials in northern Los Angeles County are putting an end to the car-tunes that are driving residents crazy.
Lancaster city officials said this week that they're paving over a quarter-mile strip of asphalt grooved to play the William Tell Overture when auto tires speed over its surface.
The road was completed earlier this month as part of an ad campaign for Honda. It's engineered to play the overture -- also known as the theme to the Lone Ranger -- at perfect pitch for motorists driving Honda Civics at 55 mph.
Guinness Trots Out Record Holders to Promote Latest Book
Shown: woman who speaks 133 languages with man who memorized pi to 240,000 places.
Capitalism Collapses
“Didn't work,” says expert.
Bush Administration Acknowledges Economy a “Mixed Picture”
Points to positive signs in panhandling sector.
Five Former Secretaries of State Urge U.S. to Talk to Iran
McCain: All five “naive and inexperienced.”
Bank Crisis Benefits Some Companies
Simmons, Serta, Spring Air, Stearns & Foster, Sealy Posturepedic and Dux.
Breakthrough: Brain Cells Observed Retrieving a Memory
They work just like machines at dry cleaners that retrieve your clothes.
New Piece by Mozart Found
Though musicologists skeptical about provenance of Gangsta Cantata in F.
In 2000, the long fought for and long admired democracy of the United States of America began a slow and steady decline toward fascism - a Bush family tradition - with the installment of a president - a man the citizens overwhelmingly rejected (although the funny math told a still believed myth) - by a few corrupt judges on the US Supreme Court. That coup is now nearly complete and checkmate is all but unavoidable.
Let me first point you to the Bush administration's so-called Wall Street bailout bill, here, so that you can see for yourself that this treachery is being conducted in the light of day. Fascism is finally and formally out of the right-wing closet even if the F word is not yet openly being used (although it should be, and often).
Now, if you do not yet understand that the Wall Street crisis is a man-made disaster done through intentional deregulation and corruption, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell to you (or Sara Palin does anyway). This manufactured crisis is now to be remedied, if the fiscal fascists get their way, with the total transfer of Congressional powers (the few that still remain) to the Executive Branch and the total transfer of public funds into corporate (via government as intermediary) hands.
It seems this time around, the Bush family is trying the more subtle approach to open bloodshed: first create a crisis, then under the guise of addressing that crisis, overthrow democracy. Yes, it does sound terribly conspiracy-theory-esque when explained just this way. But what else does one call a criminal conspiracy to destroy Congressional powers permanently, alter Judicial powers permanently, and steal public funds?
Some skeptics are calling Henry Paulson’s $700 billion rescue plan for the U.S. financial system “cash for trash.” Others are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq.
There’s justice in the gibes. Everyone agrees that something major must be done. But Mr. Paulson is demanding extraordinary power for himself — and for his successor — to deploy taxpayers’ money on behalf of a plan that, as far as I can see, doesn’t make sense.
But Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a “clean” plan. “Clean,” in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.
I’m aware that Congress is under enormous pressure to agree to the Paulson plan in the next few days, with at most a few modifications that make it slightly less bad. Basically, after having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control, the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now.
But I’d urge Congress to pause for a minute, take a deep breath, and try to seriously rework the structure of the plan, making it a plan that addresses the real problem. Don’t let yourself be railroaded — if this plan goes through in anything like its current form, we’ll all be very sorry in the not-too-distant future.
"This whole deal started when the financial industry stopped treating people like customers and started treating them like prey." - Elizabeth Warren.
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It’s sad. “Stupidity” has become the buzzword in any examination of contemporary American cultural anthropology. It insidiously pervades all aspects of our lives-home life, work life, school life ...
